Giovanni Franzese: Tokenization needs IPv6

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Tokenization will be blockchain’s killer application, unlocking trillions of dollars in the global economy. However, this vision can only be achieved with the IPv6 internet protocol, says Giovanni Franzese.

Franzese is an executive partner at London-based enterprise blockchain leader nChain, where he also heads IP commercialization. He previously worked for over two decades at Swedish telecom giant Ericsson, where he headed the AI and blockchain units.

On the sidelines of the IEEE COINS Conference, he spoke to CoinGeek reporter Becky Liggero about IPv6 and why it’s critical to the vision of blockchain.

“In my view, there are two main use cases where IPv6 can bring value. One is IoT, where you need a lot of addresses to reference those [interconnected] devices. The other is tokenization.”

nChain is spearheading a tokenization project in Japan, according to Franzese. The company has partnered with the city of Fukushima and Keio University to digitize the country’s ubiquitous paper vouchers and replace them with blockchain-based tokens.

The project requires IPv6 to issue IP addresses to these tokens, making them easier to hold and trade.

“Because the innovation we’re trying to introduce with this project is basically to give an IPv6 address to those tokens. And we’ll need a lot of them. This is the innovation we bring: tokens addressed by IPv6.”

IPv6 is even more critical for the Internet of Things. With the number of interconnected devices set to hit 40 billion by the end of the decade, the need for unique IP addresses has never been greater. This is further enforced by advances in IoT, such as edge computing, where individual devices can process more information and push out actionable data. This increases the need to secure these individual devices, and having unique IP addresses is a critical first step.

nChain is the global leader in blockchain patents and is set to benefit significantly from the convergence of these emerging technologies, which all need a secure, scalable, and stable enterprise blockchain for enhanced security, efficiency, and trust, says Franzese.

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